If, as seems increasingly likely, the Dolphins part ways with their (dancing with the) star defensive end Jason Taylor, the Eagles would have to take a look at him, wouldn't they? After all, the guy has double digit sacks in six of the last eight seasons. That's a pretty good track record.

My only problem with the guy is that when you're bringing in a late-career veteran to give your team some spark, don't you want him to be someone who cares more about finally winning that ring than he does about laying the groundwork for a post-football media career?

Does that talent trump what looks to be a dwindling fire?

I guess the best answer to that question comes from imagining him signing with the Cowboys. Yeah, that would probably bum us all out a fair amount.

But I like the character this team is building in its locker room. Not sure you want to mess with that chemistry.

I had a thought the other night while brainstorming some topics for upcoming posts. The general sense in Iggles Land seems to be that after year of making a complete hash out of the linebacker position -- letting Trotter walk, making poor draft picks, signing an endless array of washed-up stopgap veterans -- the Eagles have finally figured out how to put together a linebacking corps that could: a) be pretty good and b) stick together for a few years.

Obviously we don't know for sure what to expect next year. I'm looking forward to Omar being back home on the weak side, but Gocong needs to take it up a couple notches and Stewart Bradley is the walking definition of unproven. (I don't think anyone's going to find a Reid quote saying he was playing at a "Pro Bowl" level at the end of last year.) But there's at least the potential that this could be a pretty good group.

What I find interesting about this is that the Eagles didn't change a single thing about how they approached the position. They refused to go sign a big money free agent, nor did they spend one of their top two picks on a blue chipper like Paul Posluszny.

Gocong and Bradley were both third-rounders, but Gaither stuck around until the fifth. And all three guys had question marks coming out of college. Gaither was a little undersized, Gocong was a small-school defensive end, and Bradley had a somewhat subpar senior season due to recovering from a serious knee injury suffered his junior year. It goes too far to suggest they were plucked from the scrap heap -- way too far, in fact -- but none of them was a slam dunk NFL starter. The fact that they all might make it is either a credit to the Eagles' scouting/coaching staffs or perhaps also a sign that they finally got a little luck at the position.

Of course, it's also true that they didn't roll the dice with just these three guys. The last few years, they've been carpet-bombing the position with mid/late-round draft picks and UDFAs who have some question marks. Just this year, they drafted Joe Mays (undersized) and Andy Studebaker (another DE conversion, this time from Division III) to add to the mix. I almost feel like the Eagles signed Rocky Boiman just to add some big name credibility (Notre Dame) to their linebacker mix.

So it's an interesting discussion question. Did the Eagles have the right approach all along, and they just didn't pick the right guys / had some bad luck with draft picks? Or was it instead that they just happened to get lucky with these three particular guys and that bailed them out?

Here's what I've got: Eagles second-year tight end Brent Celek (above) sort of looks like that dude Andy Samberg from SNL (after the jump). And when I say "sort of," I mean "if Andy Samberg gained 60 pounds of muscle and could run curl patterns."

At some point I will actually include football-related commentary on this site. I swear.

May 21, 2008

I've never heard of this show, but hey, I'm all about supporting the local theater.

The Philly FanTheatre Exile presents a return engagement of its hit show The Philly Fan by Bruce Graham, starring Tom McCarthy, and directed by Joe Canuso. A one-man tour-de-force in which two-time Barrymore Award winner Tom McCarthy takes audiences on a hilarious journey through the frustrations of the past fifty years of Philadelphia sports. This production is an in-your-face, tell-it-like-it-is romp through the memories of a hard core fan used to seeing sure-thing victories turn into “oh-my-God-they-blew-it” defeats.

June 10-15 at The Playground at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street. Tickets are $25 - $30 ($50 for the Opening Night Gala); call (215)922-4462 or visit www.ThePhillyFan.net

Two interesting DeSean Jackson reads on Philly.com today. There's a short bio box that includes this amazing stat:

As a returner: Career average of 16.7 yards per punt return set a Cal record and ranks second in Pac-10 history behind baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson, of UCLA (18.8).

Seriously, Jackie Robinson pops up in all kinds of crazy stats. That man was an incredible athlete. Although, not to be outdone, here's Jackson's baseball background:

On the diamond: Was ranked by Baseball America as the third-best all-around athlete in the Major League Baseball draft prospect pool in 2005 after hitting .380 with 20 stolen bases in his senior season in high school.

Tedford said if the Eagles fashion the proper environment for Jackson, he will work hard and he should succeed.

"I don't know that he worked as hard he could have, because he's a very natural player,'' Tedford said. "Now that he's in the NFL, and he has to compete with guys who are all as good as he is, he'll figure out he needs to work . . . He got away with doing things on natural ability a lot at this level, that he probably won't be able to do at that level. I don't think he's opposed to it, but he'd probably even admit he can work harder.

Tedford goes on to say that Jackson's a good kid overall, but oh boy, this could be interesting.

In yesterday's post, it turns out I made a bit more of a leap than some were willing to grant when I said that besides Brian Dawkins "there's not a single other safety on the roster who's proven he's a legitimate NFL starter."

I got kind of called out on it in the comments, which I always appreciate. That's a lot better than just thinking everyone agrees -- when they don't -- and it also indicates areas where I should spend more time doing some research. So while I did cover some of this ground before, there's certainly a lot more we can discuss here.

Here's the thing about Quintin Mikell. I like him just as much as you do. Everyone likes rooting for the guys who come into the league as unrestricted free agents, bust their tails on special teams for a few years, and then earn their spots on the field. Much better than the top ten picks who get handed a bunch of money right out of college but then fall short of the hype.

So there's nothing personal about my concerns about him. Hell, I really hope he proves me wrong, since that would be a great sign for the defense in 2008. I'm just not sure, based on what I've seen so far, how Mikell is going to handle a full-time starting role once teams start going after him.

- - - - - -

Let's begin with the stats. To remove the special teams effect as much as possible, these are only the numbers for the games during which these four guys started last year:

Those numbers aren't that easy to compare, however, so here's the same table with every guy's stats extrapolated over a 16 game season:

The obvious first takeaway is that Dawk clearly wasn't himself last year. No sacks and one interception just isn't his thing.

But we knew that already, so the second takeaway should be that we should avoid reading too much into small sample sizes, because J.R. looks like an absolute monster in those numbers. Especially because we don't know how many of those 15 tackles might have been picked up on special teams (although Mikell and Considine both played on STs as well).

Randy Moss certainly knows his name, though.

And the final takeaway is that Mikell had a nice season, but it's a big old stretch to claim it was anything like Pro Bowl caliber.

In fact, if you compare Mikell's season to a couple other recent samples, you can get a better sense of context:

The 2004 season was the year the Eagles sent three guys from the secondary to the Pro Bowl, including Dawkins. I picked it randomly from his five Pro Bowl seasons mostly because I wanted to look at Michael Lewis' stats as well. That guy sure could tackle.

Here's the 16-game extrapolation:

Now I think we really need to take Considine's tackle numbers with a grain of salt, because he tallied a fair number of special teams tackles that year according to the Eagles' stats (although, again, these tables are based only on the games each player started). Also, it's generally not a good sign when your safeties are making too many tackles ... especially on running backs ... 10 yards downfield.

But Dawkins' sample season was clearly much better than either of the other guys. Beyond that, I'm not seeing a whole lot of obvious separation there between Mikell and Considine. And while Considine's injury history is certainly something to consider, we know now that the first surgery he had to fix the problem didn't do the job. Maybe this time the doctors have it figured out.

- - - - - -

So those are the numbers, but let's talk about what we actually see on the field as well. Generally speaking, fans only notice two things while the game is going on: 1) the really, really good plays and 2) the really, really bad plays. We don't see everything in between, like when a safety correctly plays a coverage and takes away a deep receiver or when a defensive tackle holds up two blockers so a linebacker is free to make the tackle.

It's actually really hard to judge these guys properly in real time, so what we end up doing is a kind of evaluative shorthand where we tally up all the good plays (big hits, interceptions, passes knocked down), compare those to all the screw ups (missed tackles, balls caught on their coverage) and then see how things net out.

The problem is that this really isn't a very good way to evaluate players. It misses 98 percent of what they do on the field. And it's prone to serious perception biases, like how Considine can miss a tackle and he's a bum, whereas Dawk misses the same tackle and "boy that guy made a great move."

Considine's problem is (mostly) that he's missed some very visible tackles in some very embarrassing ways. We may not be able to explain any of Jim Johnson's zanier zone coverage schemes, but we're pretty damn certain that the whole point of being on defense is bringing down the guy carrying the football.

In Mikell's case, we don't see the same kind of thing, because tackling isn't his problem. He's great at that. But I know there were times when I was re-watching games last year when people caught balls on that secondary and I thought -- although you can never be sure -- "that sure seemed like Mikell's responsibility there."

- - - - - -

And that right there is my concern about Mikell in a nutshell. We saw just two years ago with Michael Lewis what can happen when a safety who is very good at playing near the line of scrimmage starts getting picked on by teams further down the field. You need a whole lot of tackles for three-yard losses to make up for one blown coverage that leads to a 60-yard touchdown.

Now maybe I'm wrong to worry about that. Maybe Mikell will be even better this year than he was last. But I wouldn't bet against there being some shuffling again this year at that very important position.